This remembrance by Herb Jauchen ’40 is the first in a series published by Wheaton College Alumni magazine, beginning January, 1966. He served as Vice President of Westmont College and Vice President of advertising for Christian Life Publications. Previously he had managed department stores in Oregon for 13 years, following five years in the US Army during WW II. For two years, 1969-70, he was the Wheaton National Alumni Fund Chairman.

While many rightfully attribute their current successful positions to praying mothers, fathers, parents or Christian homes, the Lord knows I must honestly attribute all of my present blessings to the life He began and shaped for me during four years at Wheaton College, made possible by the faithfulness and dedication of the college family unto God. Those were the lean, post-depression years of the late ’30s, and many of us at that time (interestingly, including most of the then-struggling varsity teams) knew what 40-50-hour work weeks meant, along with tiring practices and full academic schedules.

From the beginning, for me, a young man without a home, who even then already had seen much of life in the raw, Wheaton quickly became my home. It began with the warm welcome of upperclassmen like Dayton Roberts, Roger McShane and Bob Lazear and ended, physically, after four years of warm friendship and acceptance by a host of faculty, administration and students alike – four of the happiest and most memorable years of my life. The most important event of those years of many recognitions and awards, however, was the joy, late in Junior year, along with the girl who later became my wife, Joanna Cochran, of being introduced to and receiving Jesus Christ as my personal savior. Strangely, I had been at Wheaton nearly three full years before anyone personally and individually explained Jesus Christ to me. Late one May evening, the faithfulness of Evan Welsh was again used of God, as it has been innumerable times before and since, in leading Joanna and me to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Our lives were completely changed from that time on. Yes, above all, Wheaton College was used not only to lead me into the Christian life but also to give me a wonderful, God-honoring wife and mother of our five children, was well as a sound Christian and academic education. In addition, Wheaton has given me true and tested friends from both faculty, administration and student body alike – V.R. Edman, K.B. Tiffany, Ed Coray, Don Kennedy, Manly Wilcox and many others – who have continued faithful through the years, even as they were during often-difficult undergraduate days.

Almost daily, also, in some 25 years of military, business and Christian service experience, has come to mind and use some of the rich lessons of life first learned in the classrooms, athletic events and campus activities of college days. For truly God has been good in giving knowledge and wisdom to raise up a Christian home and family, following His precepts and playing according to the rules of the game both in home and business. Never having had a Christian home before attending Wheaton, it is thrilling to see my children enjoy the benefits of lessons first taught me there. Recently, my 19-year-old son John wrote that he had just realized my own ultimate success would be measured by the success of my children, above all, spiritually. It was especially gratifying to have that letter come from Wheaton, where he is now in his second year, earning his own way also, by choice, and already learning many more of life’s rich lessons that can be so well learned there. It is our prayer that his younger brothers and sisters also will be able to attend Wheaton and continue on to the mission field, even as John and his older sister Jan are presently planning to do.

The theme of the Wheaton Centennial was the faithfulness of Wheaton to the cause of Christ. I thank God for that faithfulness – of its founders, its faculty, administration, and alumni – not only through past years, but also today, in this era of intellectual unrest, and I pray what will be tomorrow should our Lord tarry. Only by this continuing faithfulness, which has done so much for me, can my children and thousands of other children who will attend Wheaton in the years ahead have the opportunity of being blessed and privileged in beginning life’s journey on their own on sound Christian principles, precepts and learning – for His honor and His glory.

This remembrance by Harold Lindsell appeared in the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine, as part of a series called “What Wheaton College Did for Me.”

My life has never been the same for having gone to Wheaton. I came to alma mater having been out of high school and in business for five years. As a result of business experience my objectives were clarified. I came to Wheaton with a definite purpose in mind. I intended to major in business administration and to return to the world I left to go to college. All of this was changed, however. Wheaton’s greatest contribution to my life came in February of 1936 when there was a great revival. The speaker for the midyear evangelistic effort was Robert C. McQuilkin of Columbia Bible College where I later taught. I sat through those days as the Holy Spirit worked graciously and my own life and walk were permanently affected. God broke through human barriers. He spoke and I responded. I changed my major from business administration to history. This, in turn, led later to postgraduate study, the Christian ministry and theological seminary training.

Wheaton afforded me another opportunity for gratitude through the medium of certain faculty members who were genuinely helpful during my college years – Drs. Nystrom, Tiffany, Clark, Edman, Straw and Miss Erickson, to name a few. Teaching is more than books. It is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log and a boy on the other. It is person interacting with person. These were some of the teachers who left an indelible impression on me and who were a special blessing. Wheaton also brought me in contact with students who became fast friends and with whom my life has been intertwined for thirty years. This has been especially true for one who has been in full time Christian service. In all the years of Christian service I have never labored any place where there were not some of the Wheaton graduates with whom I formed friendships on campus. This gift of Wheaton has been a never failing source of blessing to me.

Wheaton also gave me a good liberal arts education. I learned how to study and how to use my time to the best advantage. It brought me to a place in my use of the Bible where, as a student, I determined to read it through once a year – and I have done so for more than a quarter of a century. Perhaps the acid test of one’s opinion of his alma mater is “Would I choose it again if I were commencing my college education today?” My answer to this question is simple: my oldest daughter has graduated from Wheaton; my second daughter is presently a student there; my third daughter looks forward to Wheaton with expectation. And God willing, my only son will become a loyal son of alma mater when his turn comes.

On this 40th anniversary year of the Apollo 14 space mission it is appropriate to consider Wheaton’s relationship to space.

For nearly 70 years a domed observatory, resembling a derelict space capsule fallen to Earth, stood conspicuously on the front lawn of Blanchard Hall. With its telescopic eye poised to the stars, the “Lemon,” as it was nicknamed, informed generations of students about the graceful syncopations of celestial bodies. Since its 1972 relocation to Camp Honey Rock, the Lemon has been replaced by two successive observatories, both situated atop Wheaton’s science buildings. Since its inception Wheaton College has studied the metaphysical Heaven of the Bible, but the observatory symbolizes its engagement with the physical heavens – and those who’ve set their gaze on that boundless expanse.

Harold Lee Alden, born in Chicago, graduated from Wheaton College in 1912. He acquired his master’s degree from the University of Chicago in 1913. After that he earned his doctorate in astronomy in 1917 from the University of Virginia, where he researched at the McCormick Observatory, using its 26-inch telescope, one of the largest in the world. In 1925 Yale developed a new telescope and shipped it to Johannesburg, South Africa, to observe the clear southern skies. Alden, sent to direct the program, lived there with his family for nearly 20 years, returning to the University of Virginia in 1945, where he served as professor of astronomy and director of the Observatory until retiring in 1960. He died at age 74. As one of 500 deceased men and women of science, including luminaries like Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, Alden was honored to have a crater on the dark side of the Moon named after him.

As a youngster Paul W. Gast, also from Chicago, suffered poor health. Often staying home he read books and magazines like Moody Monthly, from which he learned about Wheaton College. “My ambition has always been research and experimentation,” he wrote on his application. “…And I felt if I was to go into this field it was necessary to go to college.” While at Wheaton, where he was recognized as a top student in chemistry, Gast met his future wife, Joyce, with whom he would parent three children. Graduating in 1952 he pursued advanced education and taught at several universities, notably as Professor of Geology at the University of Minnesota. In 1970 he was hired by NASA as Chief of the Planetary and Earth Sciences Division at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston, Texas. As a member of the Lunar Sample Analysis Planning Team, he advised NASA on the disposition of lunar samples brought to Earth by the Apollo missions. For his exemplary service Dr. Gast was awarded NASA’s Distinguished Service Medal, the Geochemical Society’s V.M. Goldschmidt Medal and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics Space Science Award. He was president of the Volcanology, Geochemistry and Petrology Section of the American Geochemistry Union, in addition to publishing numerous articles detailing the origin of volcanic rocks, the chemistry of Earth’s upper mantle and geochronology. In 1973 Wheaton College recognized him with its Alumni Service to Society Award. Sadly, Gast had been earlier diagnosed with cancer and died at age 43 in March of that year. “His death,” eulogized geochemist Dr. J. Lawrence Kulp, “is a loss to the nation, to science, to NASA, to his many friends and colleagues, but most deeply to those he loved – his family. May his memory strengthen us, may it enrich our lives and may it turn us to God. That was his desire.”

Grote Reber did not attend Wheaton College, though many of his relatives did. In 1937 Reber, using parts from the University of Chicago and elsewhere, built in his parents’ back yard in downtown Wheaton a radar dish for cosmic radio reception. For ten years he was the only active radio astronomer in the world, listening to the weak but constant static of the solar system. In 1944 he published his discoveries on radio wave transmissions in the Astrophysical Journal. His research paved the way for satellite communications, AM and FM radio bands and cell phones. Reber’s radar dish is now displayed in Green Bank, West Virginia, on the grounds of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory.

Reber’s mother, a school teacher, stimulated her son’s interest in science with articles written by her former pupil, Edwin Hubble, another explorer of interstellar mysteries. Born in Missouri, Hubble lived for several years in the city of Wheaton, though he did not attend Wheaton College. Graduating from Wheaton High School, he entered the University of Chicago; then, as a Rhodes Scholar, Oxford University. In 1923 he published his paper, “Island Universes,” revealing his discoveries regarding redshifts, the increased wavelengths of radiation emitted by a celestial object. The nebulae farther away, he observed, were receding at the fastest rate, indicating an expanding universe. His seminal work placed him on the cover of Time magazine in 1930. National Geographic cited him as possibly the most important astronomer since Galileo, and Stephen Hawking in A Brief History of Time stated that “Hubble’s discovery that the Universe is expanding was one of the great intellectual revolutions of the 20th Century.” Not only is a middle school in Wheaton named after Hubble, but so is an orbiting telescope, known for its occasional malfunctions as much as for its spectacularly successful functionality. Edwin Hubble died in 1953.

Shannon Lucid was born in Shanghai, China, of parents working with China Inland Mission. When China closed to missionaries, the family moved to Bethany, Oklahoma. From 1960-62 Shannon attended Wheaton College, but departed before completing due to tuition increases, finishing her advanced education at the University of Oklahoma. In 1978 NASA selected her as an astronaut for its Space Shuttle flight crew. Flying multiple missions, Lucid held the record for most hours in orbit of any woman in the world; her record was broken in 2002. She also held the United States single mission flight endurance record on the Russian Space Station Mir. She was been awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and the Russian Order of Friendship Medal. When asked by reporters if she found God in space, Dr. Lucid replies: “No. God found me years ago. That is your story.”

Some information for this entry is derived from Mary Anne Phemister’s 32 Wheaton Notables, their stories and where they lived.

This recollection by Dr. Wendell White ’05 of Los Angeles was submitted to the Wheaton College Alumni Magazine (Feb. 1958) for a feature called “We Asked for Good Old Stories.”

I had returned to Wheaton a week before the school semester commenced. I was downtown in the stores and a Western Union agent got the word and came across the street and told us the startling and tragic news that President McKinley had been assassinated. I jumped on my bicycle and rode up to the college building and over to the Tower as fast as I could make it. I climbed up to where I could reach the bell rope and rang the bell and kept on ringing it. Then to keep anyone from stopping me, I climbed up above the trap door pulling the rope with me and kept on ringing where no one could get to me.

First I saw professor Fischer coming over in his old one horse buggy with his gray horse. Then Professor Whipple came waddling over from the dormitory where they were staying. Soon Professor Straw and Professor Mullenix came. Many people came to the Tower and they tried to stop me from ringing the bell but I only climbed up farther where they couldn’t get through. The trap door was not only closed under my feet but I had to pull a big timber over it. After I had tolled the bell for a long time, I climbed down to where the crowd was waiting to get their hands on me. The moment I saw them I said, “Didn’t you know that the President of the United States has been shot?” And everyone left without a word.

When Wayne Wray initially enrolled at Wheaton College, his desire as a student was to pursue veterinary medicine and oceanography, reflecting his passion for the outdoors. He wrote on his application: “I can offer Wheaton a life dedicated to Christ and believe your acceptance of me will give me advantages I will not find in all colleges. My hope is in Christ and I commit all things to His leadership.” As a sophomore in the fall of 1972, his goal as an athlete was to be the defensive starting end for the Crusaders. Through grueling practice and determination he earned the position. During his first starting game as a varsity football player, playing against Millikan University, he received a critical injury, a fractured and dislocated fourth cervical. Suddenly he was paralyzed from the neck down. He endured three major surgeries in three days. Each time the neurosurgeons declared, “No hope.” As he lay motionless in the intensive care unit, drifting in and out of consciousness, Wayne prayed and sought God’s will for his life, now so dramatically altered. Strengthened by his faith and the constant encouragement of friends and family, Wayne did not surrender to despondency. Instead, he set objectives and accomplished them one by one, tackling his rehabilitation with the same focus with which he’d played ball. He learned to type, write and print. “He cheers and lifts you up when you go to see him,” visitors remarked. “He’s not bitter, he would play again if his body were healed.” Wayne decided that he would encourage others as a profession.

To assist with medical expenses, classmates raised $100,000 for the “Wray of Hope” campaign. In 1972 Wayne returned to Wheaton College to receive an honorary degree. Following that he earned his associate’s degree from Springfield Technical Community College and his bachelor’s degree from Northern Colorado University. Fulfilling his desire to help others who’d experienced similar injuries, he received his master’s degree in rehabilitation counseling in 1982. That year he also married Jeanette Gaffney, a physical therapist. The wedding was performed by his Wheaton roommate, Scott McClellen. Though Wayne provided a shining beacon for victims of spinal injuries, he faced one more challenge in 1986 when he was diagnosed with cancer. After battling illness for several months, he died at age 34 on January 4, 1987, at his home in Ocala, Florida. As he’d indicated on his college application, he did truly “commit all things to His leadership.” Wayne’s football coach at Wheaton College, Gary Taylor, observed at the funeral, “He taught us about courage because he faced unbelievable odds and time and again beat them…He set goals, saying, ‘If I can only get by today, then I can start on tomorrow.'”

A memorial scholarship in Wayne’s honor was established at Wheaton College to recognize, encourage and financially assist any upperclass student who has faced, or is facing, personal adversity, and who nevertheless shows continued growth in faith, in academic performance and in contribution to campus life.

Dr. Evan Welsh, Wheaton’s first chaplain, serving from 1955-70, and later as Alumni Chaplain, sat for this excerpted 1980 interview, conducted by Mark Dawson, for the Record. The 75-year-old preacher briefly recounts the Wheaton College presidents he has known.

“He was one of the most striking-looking men that ever lived,” Welsh recalled of Charles Blanchard. “He was about six-two, well built, had snowy white hair, a snowy mustache, and piercing black eyes. But he was very gentle, very loving, very firm, very courageous. He treated the college like his family. He had deep convictions on salvation, holy living and the Law of God.” Welsh said that late in his career, Blanchard insisted that Wheaton maintain its doctrinal integrity in the face of rising modernism in the evangelical world. Even so, in the 1920s evangelicalism began to shift away from the ideals of the Blanchards. “Churches became prophetic centers,” Welsh said. “I remember in chapel in 1925, an outstanding speaker telling us that it looked like 1926 was surely the day of the Lord’s coming. They were so preoccupied with eschatology that they neglected the social aspect of the gospel that had been big in (Jonathan) Blanchard’s day.”

With the sudden death of Charles Blanchard in 1925, the college invited J. Oliver Buswell to take the presidency. Describing Buswell as “an excellent scholar, a strong speaker and a great theologian,” he added that Buswell was committed to being separated from the old-line denominations. Welsh praised Buswell for getting Wheaton accredited in spite of hostility from secular educators because of the college’s evangelical stance. He also complimented Buswell for his doctrinal convictions, his emphasis on good scholarship, and for doubling the student population. According to Welsh, Buswell introduced the pledge to assure the Christians of his day that Wheaton would not “go down the drain” once the Blanchards were gone. “We had no pledge in my day,” he said. “Although President Blanchard believed strongly in the separated life.” Welsh spoke highly of Buswell, but said his differences with the trustees of his support of an independent missions board and of a controversial football coach led him to resign.

“Dr. Edman was just the man to take the presidency at that time,” Welsh continued. “In the midst of the fundamentalist-modernist controversy, here comes Ray Edman, a very pacifistic soul, a fine, devout Christian. He was a marvelous P.R. man. In any group he just won their hearts. I think how many times he’d say, ‘Evan, your caffeine count is low, let’s go out for a cup of coffee.’ He was a very genial, warm person, a keen mind, a good administrative hand at the helm, and a fervent spirit.”

Likewise, Welsh described Dr. Armerding as a spiritual giant. “I have seen him grow on the job,” he said. “He was less of a mixer with students than Dr. Edman when he took the presidency, but that has changed over the years.” Citing an example, Welsh described a chapel service in the 1960s. “He gave the chapel talk, and then he said, ‘Now before I close this chapel, there’s another part to it that’s going to come as a complete surprise even to the other party involved. Will Jerry Lower please come forward?’ This surprised hippie-type person – I can hardly tell this without tears – came forward. Then Dr. Armerding just threw his arms around him. Well, the chapel went wild.” Welsh paused, drying his eyes with his hands. “Do you think I’ve communicated my feeling about Wheaton, guy?” Welsh said his love for Wheaton centers around its biblical basis, its strong scholarship, and its social passion. “I sometimes say to my wife, we’ve been privileged to know some of the best people in the world.”

This charming sketch of Dr. J. Oliver Buswell, Jr., drawn by Dewitt Whistler Jayne, accompanied by Buswell’s written greeting to the student body, is published in the 1935 Tower, wherein the president briefly thanks the staff for their excellent work on the current edition and for “…so tastefully furnishing the office during your second year in college…” Jayne in 1936 pushed for developing the art department, convincing the administration that it would provide a major contribution the liberal arts education. As a result, one course in art and one course in music were incorporated into the curriculum. During the 1970s Jayne donated over 1300 etchings, woodcuts and drawings by his uncle, renowned illustrator Allen Lewis (SC-60), who was also a distant cousin of James McNeill Whistler. Jayne’s painting, “Who Was That Shining One?” hangs in the Wheaton College Special Collections public area. It depicts missionaries Bob Ekvall and Ed Carlson’s encounter with frightened bandits in western China, who saw something mysterious that Ekvall and his companion did not see at the time.